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Friday, March 18, 2016

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C, "Lent: Treasured," John 12:1-8

Sermon 3/13/16

John 12:1-8

Lent: Treasured

Can you think of the time that you were most full of
thanksgiving? A time when your heart was just overflowing with gratitude? When
you couldn’t stop giving thanks to God for the miracles that unfolded? Once,
when I was little, through a strange series of events, my mom thought, very
briefly, that I had been kidnapped. I was actually out riding my bike around
the streets of Westernville. But she’d lost track of where I went after
delivering the newspaper on my street, and she thought she saw me in a van driving
away from the house. I was oblivious to her terror, until my big brother found
me and brought me home. I can still remember exactly how alarmed his expression
was as he rode on his bike to find me. And I can remember my mother’s
thankfulness that I was found, even though, to my mind, I hadn’t really even
been lost. Only when I got older could I begin to imagine her fear and
understand her overwhelming joy at being wrong. Her gratitude. When do you
remember being most completely full of thanksgiving?

Today,
we read of Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume. This
story of Jesus being anointed appears in all four gospels in some form, though
there are significant differences in all the tellings of it. In Mark and in
Matthew, Jesus is said to be dining at the home of Simon the leper when an
unidentified woman anoints his head. All
the disciples in Matthew’s account, and just ‘some’ of the ones who were there
in Mark’s telling complain about her extravagantactions. We might even think of her as prodigal, like we talked
about last week – reckless and extreme in her use of costly resources. In
Luke’s account, Jesus is eating with Pharisees, when a woman called ‘a sinner’
comes into the house and weeping, wipes his feet with her tears and dries them
with her hair. There is no mention in Luke of the cost of the ointment the
woman uses, and Jesus responds to criticism from the Pharisees with a parable
about hospitality and forgiveness.

But here in John’s gospel, in the version of the story we study today, we find
some different, interesting details. Here, we read that Jesus is visiting with
Lazarus in Bethany just before the Passover, just before Jesus entered
triumphantly into Jerusalem. In other words, this occurs on the brink of what
we have come to call Holy Week, just where we are now. Lazarus is brother to
Mary and Martha, and already in the gospel of John we’ve encountered these
sisters. Earlier in John, Martha is busy trying to prepare dinner for Jesus,
and wanting Mary to help, but Jesus says Mary, listening at his feet to his
teaching, has made a good choice. And then, Lazarus falls ill and dies. Jesus
weeps for his dear friend. But he talks with Martha about being the
resurrection and life, and Martha seems to understand, and Jesus raises
Lazarus, dead and in his tomb for days, from his grave. Our text for today
happens essentially immediately following the raising of Lazarus. Jesus is now
back in their home, dining with Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, along with the
disciples. John clearly shows Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha as people
with whom Jesus is very close. They are dear friends. Martha is (again) preparing
dinner, and while Jesus and Lazarus talk, Mary takes a pound of costly perfume
made of pure nard, and anoints Jesus’ feet. She wipes them with her hair, and
we read that the whole house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume, and
we can almost smell the rich scent as we read. In John’s account, it is Judas
who raises a fuss. We’re told that this is because he was the treasurer of the
disciples, and was looking to steal money from their common purse. He
criticizes Mary’s actions – “why was this perfume not sold for three hundred
denarii and the money given to the poor?” Jesus answers: “Leave her alone. She
bought it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you
do not always have me.”

In Jesus’ day washing your feet and anointing them was a common practice,
as common as hand-washing today. People traveled on hot and dusty roads, and
washing and anointing sore and dirty feet was just part of daily custom. A host
would provide hot water and sometimes ointment and oil for arriving guests. But
the guests would wash their own feet. The only one who would wash someone
else’s feet was a slave. So for a person to voluntarily wash and anoint
another’s feet would communicate a message that they were devoted enough to the
person to act as the person’s slave. That’s what Mary is communicating to Jesus
– extreme, complete devotion and commitment to Jesus, putting her life in
Jesus’ hand. Otherwise, we can make no sense of her actions – for a woman to
touch a man in this way in public, for a woman to let down her hair in public,
for a woman to engage in what would have been considered inappropriately
sensual – Mary must have had a strong motivation to act this way. And she did.
Jesus had just raised her brother from the dead. He was dead. Mary was weeping
over him, crushed, devastated, and Jesus brought him back to life. I can only
imagine that Mary is feeling more thankful than she has ever felt in her entire
life. Her gratitude – her brother was dead, and now he’s alive again – can we
even imagine? In context, it is no wonder that Mary pours out a bottle of
perfume on Jesus, no wonder she wipes his feet with her hair. It probably seems
like hardly enough, in fact. Mary, already a disciple, a student of Jesus’
teaching – well, her commitment to Jesus had just increased 100 fold. What
might you do in thanksgiving in exchange for your loved one brought back to
life? Her deep motivation is to serve Jesus completely, to devote herself to
him and his teachings entirely.

And then
we have Judas. Judas has always been the most intriguing disciple to me, stemming,
as I think you know, from my longtime love of the musical Jesus Christ
Superstar. Ever since I first saw
the production in junior high, I’ve always wondered exactly what made
Judas do what he did – what were his motivations? And I’ve always felt that we
better pay attention to Judas, because we’re not always so far from taking
actions to betray God ourselves. The gospel writer John, however, doesn’t share
my sympathetic look at Judas. For John, Judas is just the betrayer, plain and
simple. But even from John’s straightforward presentation, we can learn
something about ourselves. In this text, John sets up Judas and Mary to clearly
illustrate two paths. Mary and Judas are symbolic of two paths we can choose.
Mary shows her complete devotion to following Jesus. Judas, on the other hand,
shows self-interest in the guise of caring about the poor. His argument sounds good – Mary’s act of devotion is
quite extravagant – she spends a year’s salary on perfume for a man’s feet. But
John lets us know what he sees in Judas’ heart.

Through
John’s eyes, from his perspective, Judas is good at masquerading as a follower
of Jesus. For years, Judas followed Jesus, heard him preaching, was sent out by
Jesus to be in ministry himself with the other disciples, and no one suspected
him to be any different than any of the other disciples. We can guess that
Jesus saw into his true heart, but nowhere else do we find the other disciples
questioning him or wondering what he is doing among the twelve. He blends right
in. And yet we know what John tells us: Judas’ motivations are all wrong. He’s
looking out for himself and his own interests.

Judas
has his eye on what following Jesus is costing him – literally and
figuratively, it seems. But Mary, she can only see that she has gained everything from following Jesus,
and thus is willing to spend more. What
does it cost to follow Jesus? On the one hand, we know that grace is free.
God’s love is offered to us without price. That’s a promise God makes to us,
and keeps. But on the other hand, discipleship is also costly. Jesus says,
“take up the cross,” that instrument of my death, and follow me. That’s a
costly path he’s calling us to take. Free grace. Costly discipleship. We
understand this paradox better than we think. We know the saying that the best
things in life are free. Love, for example, a most treasured thing – it’s a
free gift we share with one another. But love is also very costly. If we love
someone, that love will cost us a lot – patience, courage, commitment,
strength. But, when we love, truly love, despite the cost, we don’t spend our
time tallying up how much we’ve spent. Love is free, and costly. But we
experience it, I hope, as a gain, not a loss, as a gift, not an expense. So it
is with grace: Grace is free, but our response to grace, a life of
discipleship, is costly. But in the way of Jesus, as we lose everything, spend
everything, give everything to following Jesus, we always seem to come away
with more than when we started. We gain life, even as we lose it in
discipleship.

I think Mary
sees that following Jesus will cost her everything, and she’s willing, ready,
to pay that price because Jesus offers life, real, abundant life in return.
She’s seen this gift of real life with her own eyes when her own brother
Lazarus was raised by Jesus, and when Jesus told her sister Martha that he was
the resurrection and the life – not for later, at some distant time, but right now. After what she’s experienced,
she would spend anything and spend it
with joy in her heart – because the gift Jesus offers – has given her – is a
priceless treasure.

Somehow,
after years with Jesus, Judas looks over everything, and sees only his losses.
Mary sees only what she’s gained. After getting her brother’s life returned to
her, she can hardly see anything else. What about us? What do you see when you
look at your life with Christ? Perhaps we haven’t experienced our loved one
being literally brought back to life. But I think that Jesus is resurrecting
us, if we let him, all the time. Bringing life to us where there were only dead
places in our hearts. What value can you place on the gifts Jesus gives us?
What gratitude stirs in your heart for one who can bring life out of death? How
far will you follow the one who can do that – bring life out of the death in
your life? Each of us must discover the cost of following Jesus, what we’re
willing to spend. Judas receives 30 silver coins to betray Jesus, and Mary
spends a year’s wages on perfume for Jesus’ feet. Mary was willing to give all
for her discipleship – but Mary makes the better deal, doesn’t she? She chooses
discipleship, which costs everything, but she gains everything. Judas gets 30
silver coins, but loses his whole life.

What is it
costing you to be a disciple? The
cost of discipleship is our whole lives, our whole selves, offered to God, a
response to the extravagant grace we’ve been given. The cost is high. But it’s
worth every penny. Are you willing to pay the price?